Citizenship: Iran/Austria
Iranian-born Austrian dual national citizen Massud Mossaheb, who turned 73 in May 2020, has reportedly been detained in Iran since January 2019. In August 2020, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under espionage-related charges without due process. His family has denied the charges and appealed for his release on medical grounds via social media, citing his elderly age and pre-existing health issues, which would put him in the high-risk category for COVID-19.
A former businessman, Mossaheb is the secretary-general of the Vienna-based “Austrian-Iranian Society,” which reportedly promotes diplomacy between the two countries. During a February 2020 trip to Tehran, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg made no public mention of Mossaheb.
Citizenship: Iran/France
*Returned to prison in January 2022
*Released into house arrest in Tehran in October 2020. Her passport remains confiscated, and she is under house arrest in Tehran.
Iran’s Appeals Court upheld a five-year prison sentence against Iranian-born French scholar Fariba Adelkhah in June 2020. The anthropologist was reportedly arrested on espionage charges by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran in June 2019. She was released with an ankle bracelet in October 2021 but remains blocked from leaving the country.
Adelkhah is a specialist in social anthropology and political anthropology of post-revolutionary Iran, according to her biography written by Jean-François Bayart, Professor at IHEID (Geneva). The French Foreign Ministry did not confirm her arrest until July. On October 15, 2019, France’s Foreign Ministry demanded that Iran release Adelkhah and fellow French academic Roland Marchal.
Citizenship: Iran/U.S.
Iranian American dual national Siamak Namazi was the head of an oil and gas company based in the United Arab Emirates when the Revolutionary Guards arrested him in Tehran in October 2015. In October 2016, he and his then 80-year-old Iranian American father were sentenced to 10 years in prison for “collaborating with enemy states” after a trial in which they were denied due process. An appeals court upheld the sentence in August 2017.
*Released on furlough (temporary leave) on March 16, 2022, in Tehran.
Citizenship: Iran/UK/U.S.
Businessman Morad Tahbaz, who has Iranian, British and US citizenship, was detained with at least nine environmentalists from the Iranian wildlife charity, the Persian Heritage Wildlife Foundation (PHWF), in January 2018 on alleged espionage charges and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in November 2019. One of his fellow detained colleagues, Iranian Canadian Kavous Seyed-Emami, died under suspicious circumstances in custody in February. Tahbaz was a board member of the PHWF. The exact charges against him remain unclear.
Citizenship: Iran/Sweden
Ahmadreza Djalali is an Iranian-born Swedish scientist (received Swedish citizenship in February 2018), physician and expert in emergency disaster medicine who has been detained in Evin Prison since he was arrested on April 24, 2016, by Intelligence Ministry agents. In October 2017 he was sentenced to death for espionage charges based on a forced confession. In a letter from the prison, Djalali wrote that he was imprisoned during a trip to Iran for refusing to spy for the Intelligence Ministry. He has appealed his sentence. Photos of Djalali that surfaced in April 2018 indicate that he has lost a substantial amount of weight for unknown reasons. His family says the authorities are refusing to allow him to receive medical care from outside the prison’s clinic.
Citizenship: Iran/Austria
Kamran Ghaderi was the CEO of an Austrian IT management and consulting company when agents of the Intelligence Ministry arrested him upon his arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 2, 2016. He was on a routine business trip and had previously traveled to Iran on many occasions for work and business seminars, including as a member of the Austrian delegation to Tehran led by then-President Heinz Fischer in October 2015.
The prosecution used a coerced confession by Ghaderi to gain a 10-year prison sentence against him in the Revolutionary Court where he was tried for the charge of “conducting espionage for enemy states.” The Appeals Court later upheld the sentence. During a February 2020 trip to Tehran, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg made no public mention of Ghaderi.
Citizenship: Iran/Canada
Reza Eslami, an Iranian-Canadian dual citizen and assistant professor of human rights and environmental sciences at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, has been sentenced to five years in prison, following a ruling by Tehran’s Appeals Court.
“Regarding the latest situation of his client Reza Eslami, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison on the charge of collaboration with the enemy US government, Rasoul Kouhpayehzadeh said that … Branch 36 of the Appeals Court in Tehran province reduced Eslami’s sentence to five years in prison,” according to the state-funded Student News Network.
Eslami, was arrested in Tehran in May 2020 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in February 2021. He was charged with “cooperating with an enemy state through his participation in a law training course in the Czech Republic.”
Citizenship: Iran/Switzerland
Kamal Alavi, a 61-year-old Swiss-Iranian businessman, has been held in Evin Prison in Tehran “at least since 2017,” according to the HRANA news outlet, after being prosecuted for “disclosing Iranian space center secrets.”
HRANA adds that Alavi is eligible for release but remains behind bars until he pays a $250 million USD fine and relinquishes all his shares in his company, which is called Stratxx and specializes in night vision radar and space balloons.
Citizenship: Iran/Sweden
Iranian-Swedish dual national Habib Chaab, also known as Habib Asyoud, was reportedly forced to go to Iran from Turkey in October 2020 after reportedly being sent to Iran by Turkish authorities. Iranian news agencies with ties to the security establishment have accused Chaab of being the leader of a banned Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz. It’s unclear where he is being held and if he has access to counsel or medical treatment.
Permanent ResidentsCitizenship: Iran/U.S. Permanent Resident
In April 2022, NBC reported that the wife of Shahab Dalili, Nahid, was pleading with the Biden administration to include her husband in any prisoner swap deal with the Iranian government. Dalili has been imprisoned in Iran since 2016 and is serving a 10-year sentence. According to various news reports, he worked for years in Iran’s shipping industry before moving to the U.S. Although he is a permanent resident, his wife says she and her children are American citizens.
“It’s important for Shahab to come back home. If there is a deal, if they are trying to release the hostages, then all the hostages should be free,” Nahid Dalili told NBC, adding that her husband was charged with “aiding and abetting” the U.S.
Freed or Status Unknown*Released to Oman on October 5, 2022.
*Released on medical furlough at an unknown date in 2018. His passport remains confiscated so he is unable to travel, and is under house arrest in Tehran.
Citizenship: Iran/U.S.
Iranian American dual national Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF representative, was arrested in Tehran in February 2016 after travelling to Iran to gain his son’s release. He was 80-years-old at the time. In October 2016, he and his Iranian American son Siamak Namazi were sentenced to 10 years in prison for “collaborating with enemy states” after a trial in which they were both denied due process. Baquer Namazi underwent heart surgery in September 2017 to receive a pacemaker. In August 2018 the Namazis’ lawyer in Iran revealed to CHRI that Baquer Namazi had been at home on furlough for “considerable length of time” receiving medical treatment.
Citizenship: Iran/UK
*Released on March 16, 2022
Iranian-born civil engineer Anoosheh Ashoori has been serving a 12-year prison sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison–10 years for “spying for the Mossad” and two years for “illegitimately acquiring 33,000 euros”– since August 2019. This sentence was later clarified to be 10 years in prison by his family. He was initially arrested in August 2017 while visiting his mother.
In October 2021, Ashoori had his request for conditional release and an appeal against his sentence thrown out.
According to his son, Ashoori spent 10 years in the UK between 1972 and 1982 while studying mechanical and aeronautical engineering. Al Jazeera English notes that Ashoori left for Iran after his father became ill and took on the family’s construction business, Techno Khallagh, developing “Roofix”, a product for building earthquake-resistant homes, schools and mosques. He returned to the UK in 2005.
*Released on March 16, 2022
*Released into house arrest in Tehran in March 2020. As of April 2021, she was sentenced to another year in prison. Her passport remains confiscated and she is under house arrest in Tehran.
Citizenship: Iran/UK
Iranian British dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested by the IRGC in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport while she was on her way back home to London after visiting her parents. Her 22-month-old daughter, who was with her at the time, was placed in the custody of her grandparents in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison in September 2016 on unspecified “national security charges.” She is currently being held in the Women’s Ward of Evin Prison and has been diagnosed with advanced depression. In October 2017, one month before she became eligible for early release, she was threatened with 16 more years in prison based on new charges brought by the IRGC.
*All charges dropped, returned to the UK
Citizenship: Iran with UK residency
UK-based British Council employee Aras Amiri was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Iran on unspecified charges in May 2019. The Appeals Court in Tehran upheld her sentence in August 2019. Amiri is currently being held in the Women’s Ward of Evin Prison. An Iranian-born UK resident who worked for the British Council, Amiri was initially arrested in Tehran in March 2018 while visiting her ailing grandmother. The 33-year-old graduate student of the UK’s Kensington College of Business was initially held in Ward 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran, controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, before being released on bail in late May 2018. She was re-arrested sometime between August 23 and September 22, 2018. In a letter from Evin Prison, Amiri wrote that she had refused to spy for the Intelligence Ministry months before she was sentenced.
The British Council stated on January 11, 2022, that Amiri has been acquitted by the Supreme Court in Iran of all charges previously made against her, following a successful appeal lodged by her lawyer. She has been freed from detention and has returned to the United Kingdom.
*Released to Australian custody on November 25, 2020.
Citizenship: UK/Australia
Although Middle East scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert was first detained in Iran by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence organization in September 2018 (previously reported as October 2018), her family did not make her arrest public until September 2019 when her appeal against a 10-year prison sentence on espionage charges was denied. As of January 2019, she remained in the extremely restrictive and isolated Ward-2A of Tehran’s Evin Prison, which is controlled by the intelligence organization of the Revolutionary Guards. The Australian government and Moore-Gilbert’s family have stated that they are trying to seek her release through diplomatic channels. Read her letters from prison here.
*Released to French custody on March 21, 2020.
Citizenship: France
According to a biography written by the University of Geneva’s Didier Péclard, French sociologist Roland Marchal, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa, was working with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique when he was arrested during a trip to Tehran in June 2019 along with fellow academic Fariba Adelkhah, who is also his romantic partner. Marchal and Adelkhah are both currently associated with the Paris Institute of Political Studies (aka Sciences Po). The French Foreign Ministry did not confirm Marchal’s arrest until October 15, 2019, when it demanded that Iran release both researchers.
*Released to Swiss custody on medical furlough on March 19. Allowed to return home to the U.S. on June 4, 2020.
Citizenship: U.S.
US navy veteran Michael R. White has been jailed in Iran since July 2018. Iran has not specified any charges or details about his case but acknowledged his imprisonment in January 2019. In an interview with the New York Times, White’s family said he was undergoing cancer treatment and has “serious medical conditions that could be life-threatening without regular, specialized medical care.”
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